Lessons from Beat Blogging, Tools of the Trade - by Patrick Thornton on Thursday, January 24, 2008 14:40 - View Comments

Schedule a Chat With Your Sources

Yoni Green thinks ChatMaker could work for newsrooms. I think it could work to organize a live chat with “friends of your beat” — people who know and are invested in what you are reporting on.

Don’t tell them it’s training, just say you’re chatting

Just six-months-old, ChatMaker.Net allows you to create “very own exclusive, invitation-only chat room.” Simply select a name for your room and the site generates a web address that you can share with only those you want to invite. Once inside, participants can click on the generic name that site assigns them and enter their own name. From there, you’ve got your own online discussion.

While ChatMaker does not allow you to share files or pictures, it does recognize links, which I think justs ads to it’s strengths. And unlike many Instant Messaging applications that allow for group chats, you don’t need to be a member of any particular service or sign-up for anything; and, it is completely free.

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About BeatBlogging.org

BeatBlogging.org was a grant-funded journalism project that studied how journalists used social media and other Web tools to improve beat reporting. It ran for about two years, ending in the fall of 2009.

New content is occasionally produced here by the this project's former editor Patrick Thornton. The site is still up and will remain so because many journalists and professors still use and link to the content. BeatBlogging.org offers a fascinating glimpse into the former stages of journalism and social media. Today it's expected that journalists and journalism organization use social media, but just a few years ago that wasn't the case.

About the Author of this post
Patrick Thornton is the editor and lead writer of BeatBlogging.Org. He is @pwthornton on Twitter.